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Tesla's Next-Generation Model Y Chassis
- Animats 5y agoNice, but no more body and frame repairs. One dent to those big parts and it's time for a new car.
- 1123581321 5y agoHopefully these huge casts can be recycled and recast. If so, they don’t seem terribly wasteful. I’d also hope that minor repair of the cast part is possible for the smallest dents. I’m not an expert in this area.
- fallingknife 5y agoMetal is extremely recyclable
- xeromal 5y agoEspecially aluminum which I believe is what Model 3 and Ys are made out of
- rootusrootus 5y agoNo, you're thinking of the Model S. The 3 and Y are predominantly steel.
- jagger27 5y agoI wonder if having less structural adhesive between metal components makes it more easily recyclable.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoAs long as insurance premiums stay reasonable, it’s a win for manufacturing speed and complexity, product quality, as well as the salvage market. And in my personal experience, vehicles are never quite the same after frame damage repairs. (legacy [Aug 2021 build, hah] Y owner)
- SkyMarshal 5y ago> And in my personal experience, vehicles are never quite the same after frame damage repairs. Same, a car with a damaged and repaired frame is usually a different car than the original. Overall this is a win. Fwiw this isn't the first mass-produced consumer vehicle with a unibody construction. For one example, the Nissan Pathfinder had it back in the 90s, though later returned to ladder-on-frame. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Pathfinder#Second_generation_(R50;_1995) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Pathfinder#Second_gener...
- rootusrootus 5y ago> this isn't the first mass-produced consumer vehicle with a unibody construction Isn't it already unibody construction, along with basically every other non-truck vehicle in production (and some trucks, too)? The only thing new is using casting for so much of the structure.
- giobox 5y agoThe unibody construction isn’t unique at all in 2022. Virtually every car on the road (except for handful of pickup and some SUV/off-roader models) has been built this way for decades now, and isn’t what’s exciting about this new approach from Tesla. What’s unique is that so much of the unibody is just 2 castings - previously the front and rear required joining 140 separate parts. Such a massive front and rear casting has never been attempted in car production, the mechanical press used to do so is a record size for a car company. VW’s ceo Herbert deiss has stated this is a massive innovation from Tesla that ultimately will enormously reduce time to assemble a vehicle - we don’t need to just take elons word for it. Time to assemble is everything when it comes to car profits. Herbert points out a VW ID3 takes ~3 days to finish assembly, with this process Tesla should be able to complete a model Y in just 10 hours, putting large competitive pressure on VW too. VW’s margins on their electric stuff hasn’t been that great to begin with either.
- diebeforei485 5y agoWe'll see how things pan out, but this might actually make repairs a better experience over time - fewer types of parts means it's easier to keep them in stock, and likely less time required per replacement.
- KennyBlanken 5y agoTesla can't keep parts in stock because they're desperate to prioritize production over parts inventory, not because they have too many parts. This will be a nightmare. A damaged fender now means instead of a fender-sized package that easily fits in a truck with lots of other things, you now have a massive half-a-car sized package. This also doesn't bode well for parts availability in the future. I can't see Tesla switching these massive presses back to producing older designs of panels.
- deelowe 5y agoWhy would a fender replacement require this? The castings are for the chassis, not the body.
- djaychela 5y agoI don't think so. I think it will mean more write offs. These castings replace current pressed panels, so anything in that area will now mean a new body shell -which realistically will mean a written off vehicle - where repairs would currently be an option. I think this is manufacturing optimisation at the cost of overall life optimisation, like the epoxy-encased batteries which are less recyclable than the previous generation.
- lottospm 5y agoAs far as I remember from my material sciences classes, casting is a lot more difficult to model and QC than stamped and welded/glued steel panels. This is also a completely new process for automotive at this scale which complicates it further. I am sure they hired the best engineers and tested as best as they can, but this seems so new that I expect there to be a lot of problems with the first year or two of production -- maybe a reason why this process is coming to North America last. And given how castings usually fail, I don't expect failures to happen immediately, but after 3-5 years or more. But then again, I'd have said the same about using "laptop batteries" for electric cars.
- SkyMarshal 5y ago> maybe a reason why this process is coming to North America last. Fyi, the article says it's coming to Gigafactory Berlin and Gigafactory Texas first. It's only coming to Gigafactory Freemont last.
- wumpus 5y agoDoesn't the Y from Fremont already have the rear casting, as of January 2021?
- letitbeirie 5y ago> This is also a completely new process for automotive at this scale which complicates it further. The Trabant had supply limitations throughout its entire production run due to scaling issues casting Its duraplast body.
- hibikir 5y agoThe model Y, as delivered today, already has a very large casting in the rear: There are many sources out there describing it, and how it simplifies model Y assembly compared to the otherwise rather similar model 3. What they are describing here is to go further with a process they are already doing very advanced work on in production cars. They might have problems. They can fail altogether. Maybe it turns out to be a bad idea anyway, but I do not expect Tesla engineering to be just naive at this. As for why Fremont is the last place to get the changes, it seems to me that there are simpler reasons: That factory is the main source for Teslas on the road today, and it operates more or less at capacity. Adding a new process would slow it down, at least temporarily. The Berlin and Texas factories, AFAIK, have yet to start operation, so they are good places to try something new, given that Tesla is selling the cars about as fast as they can make them. This is how a lot of the industry does things: Make your new facilities have the latest and greatest, and only retrofit the old ones when it makes economic sense to dismantle the older process. No matter what the theoretical savings might be for a new casting vs so much soldering and assembly, the old process is making cars, today, so decommissioning it is not as good a value proposition as just not even trying the old process in a new facility.
- temporalparts 5y agoThey will be designing the cars with buffers, but if a crash can go through all of that AND damages the single casting chassis, which are a lot stronger, then you should thankful because you'll likely have gotten way more injured with a traditional chassis.
- u320 5y agoDamage in a collision is a good thing as it requires energy. Not sure why you say a stronger part will reduce injuries.
- ec109685 5y agoPerhaps because the stronger part takes more energy to damage and thus absorbs more?
- rootusrootus 5y agoAbsorbs? What does it do with that energy, then? Radiate it? AFAIK it's just stiffer so it will effectively transmit the energy along to the next part in the chain. Eventually, that'll be a human.
- ec109685 5y agoI meant the energy will be used to deform the chassis, but perhaps I am over my skis here.
- avianlyric 5y agoInto heat mostly. It takes quite a bit of energy to deform a lump of metal. You need that energy for force atoms past each other, and the metal gets hot in the process. So yes, absorbs the energy, then radiates it as heat.
- mlyle 5y agoThe point that's being made is-- if there's a certain amount of energy being dissipated in a collision, it's better for things to crumple so that the energy is dissipated over a long time period and the peak accelerations (which damage occupants) are less. A hypothetical perfectly rigid car that stops instantly in a collision instead of deforming is not safer for the occupants, because suddenly they will be going 40MPH inside a not-moving car.
- Hamuko 5y agoAren't body and frame repairs for Teslas already pretty bad? I've looked at the insurance rates for used Model S and they're massive.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoI pay less than $100/month in insurance for a 3 year old Model S. Our Model Y is about $130/month. Sunbelt state, top tier insurance company.
- Hamuko 5y agoI pay about 900€/year for my Mercedes and a Model S would've been something ridiculous like 1800€/year.
- csunbird 5y agoI presume that you are also in Germany as well. The insurance rates here are straight up highway robbery. I wanted to get a Tesla, but the insurance quoted me more than 2000 euros.
- Hamuko 5y agoNah, Finland. But I guess there's some consistency in Tesla insurance rates being higher than other cars, so I guess that they're more prone to get into crashes, and/or they're massively expensive to repair.
- _ph_ 5y agoThe outer body of the car is still sheet metal and can be repaired as before, if not easier. The cast parts are only on the inside and also traditional cars are usuall a write-off, if the internal frame is damaged. The cast parts might even be stiffer and hence more difficult to damage. Tesla for sure has thought about this. For example, the rear cast has struts which hold the rear bumper and consequently are likely to be damaged during an accident. But these struts are designed to be cut off and replaced with new parts.
- enragedcacti 5y ago> The cast parts might even be stiffer and hence more difficult to damage. Someone with more experience should step in and correct me but my understanding is that this is how we used to do things and stopped because it turns your passengers into soup. You need those parts to crumple. I'm sure Tesla has thought of that and wouldn't downgrade the structural safety but it does mean the new design is probably just as easy to damage but more expensive to replace than traditional designs.
- spockz 5y agoI suppose you want the crumble zone to be on the outside. Outside critical parts and easily replaceable. Then you want the inner shell not to disform, or not too much, as otherwise you are sending metal into body parts.
- HPsquared 5y agoCars are designed with a strong central structure (passenger cell) and weak areas at the periphery (crumple zones). These cast parts are in the "strong" area, I think.
- _ph_ 5y agoThe crumple zones are unaffected by the casts and the casts can crumble as well. But if the car gets deformed beyond a certain point, it would be totalled anyway. If you look at pictures of the casts, the front ones mount the wheels but end there, the rest of the car ahead of them is made from sheet metal and metal bar with the purpose of crumbling easily.
- matthewfcarlson 5y agoThis is more of a broader question, but when is it a good time to buy an EV? As someone who just recently got a model Y, seeing reports like this just frustrate me. I thought about waiting until the rumored refresh but decided to go for it. Why get an EV if a newer one that's better in almost every way (range, cost, etc) is constantly just around the corner. As an example, I'm not kicking myself when the "all-new redesigned" 2021 Hyundai Tuscon comes out because while the face lift is nice, the car isn't that much better than the 2020 version. It gets similar gas mileage and has similar features. Sure there's a few nice things on the newer Tuscon but half of them could be on the old one with a software update.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bombcar 5y agoYou have to decouple the purchase from the potential future, just like we used to do in the late 90s/early 2000s with computers. So when it comes time, evaluate what is available and make a decision then - it's unlikely something comes out that makes all previous ones stop working after all. And you do get the utility during that time. If you're really concerned, look into leasing; they usually have a buyout option at the end.
- ape4 5y agoAm I the only one who doesn't want to buy "all-new redesigned" cars. I won't want an all new redesigned Operating System.
- politician 5y agoWhy? There are far fewer parts in a car than an OS.
- hedora 5y agoModern cars are rolling local area networks that use a fragile real-time network (CAN bus) in addition to 4G bluetooth, and bespoke wireless network protocols. They include many operating systems, and all sorts of other unfathomable complexity.
- marcyb5st 5y agoPretty epic feat of engineering! If this technology spreads I wonder what will happen in countries like Germany where car manufacturing employs a huge swath of the population. Already with electric cars we have way fewer moving parts, now also the assembly line can be drastically reduced. I am curious to see what will happen in such places.
- therouwboat 5y agoInstead of controlling welding robots, they control stamping machines?
- 01100011 5y agoGerman mfgs are already investing heavily in automation.
- toephu2 5y agoWhat percentage of Germany's population actually work in car manufacturing? A quick google search reveals 300k.. and Germany has has a population of 83 million. For example, BMW production exists in five different countries. You can find BMW manufacturing facilities in Germany, Mexico, China, South Africa, and America. The Spartanburg plant in Greer, South Carolina is the largest BMW production facility they have (by production volume).
- foepys 5y agoIt's way more than 300,000. Maybe people physically touching cars and car parts but there are thousands of small companies making very small parts like lighting, the handle for seat adjustments, the foam that goes into the seat, small plastic parts, and many more. Numbers I could find in a study made by the research group of the German parliament [1] were 800,000 and those are only people directly employed by manufacturers and their suppliers. 1: https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/496346/1a9b4fbe228b43b15bc6fbf3de0cb195/wd-5-122-16-pdf-data.pdf https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/496346/1a9b4fbe228b43... (German)
- rootusrootus 5y agoIIRC the legacy automakers are already heavily invested in automation. I would not be surprised if Tesla's production lines are in fact a good bit less automated than, say, BMW's.
- alphabettsy 5y ago> Tesla has begun building the next generation of Model Y with singular front and rear body castings. This is not accurate. They are using castings for the front and rear chassis along with the structural battery. Bodies of Tesla cars will continue to be stamped, which makes sense because bodies are mostly cosmetic sheetmetal. https://www.sae.org/news/2020/06/tesla-model-y-big-castings https://www.sae.org/news/2020/06/tesla-model-y-big-castings > Munro maintained. And “castings don’t repair very well,” he added. “If an impact was severe enough, the car’s a write-off,” he said.
- JPKab 5y agoI own a Tesla Model 3. In the past I owned a GM vehicle which was damaged in a collision. The chassis had a few parts which were bent. The minute a chassis of any modern vehicle is bent in any way it is an automatic write-off in the insurance industry. This is exactly what I was told when my car was categorized as totaled. It doesn't matter if the chassis is composed of many parts and can theoretically be repaired. It is such a huge undertaking to disassemble the vehicle to a level where you can repair the chassis that nobody in their right mind wants to deal with it or pay for it.
- dpark 5y agoThis isn’t a given. It depends on what a repair entails. Often a steel chassis can simply be pulled back into shape. An aluminum chassis is certainly more difficult. A friend of mine had a Lotus and the whole thing was written off for chassis damage that literally couldn’t be seen.
- mrkurt 5y agoDo any states that allow bent frame repair without a salvage title? It's been a while, but back when I was buying cars at wholesale auctions, it was a big deal when one slipped through with a bent frame without a salvage title. They reversed auctions all the time, including one truck we purchased.
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- schleck8 5y agoIs it just me or does Medium have really poor performance for a site that only delivers text and one image in this case? Edit: This article scores a lighthouse score of 23 out of 100, wow [1] And get this: Loading the article through Scribe, an alternative unofficial Medium frontend [3], scores 97 [2] [1] https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fscribe.rip%2Ftesla-begins-building-a-next-generation-model-y-chassis-6b2e1579d0aa https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fscribe.ri... [2] https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fscribe.rip%2Ftesla-begins-building-a-next-generation-model-y-chassis-6b2e1579d0aa https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fscribe.ri... [3] https://scribe.rip https://scribe.rip / https://github.com/digitalblossom/alternative-frontends https://github.com/digitalblossom/alternative-frontends
- xmorse 5y agoIf you are searching for a Medium alternative to host your blog check out Notaku [0], it can create a blog sites (also docs sites) from Notion content [0] https://notaku.website https://notaku.website
- natdempk 5y agoProbably worth mentioning you are the creator of this site?
- websap 5y agoWhy is this the top comment, this has nothing to do with what the article is about?
- londons_explore 5y agoI still don't quite understand how this ends up lighter... Castings always seem to be at least 5mm thick, whereas stampings rarely are over 0.5mm.
- ksec 5y ago>Elon Musk has called the new Model Y a revolution in automotive body engineering, turning a total of ~ 140 parts into 2 metal parts. This along with the Structural Battery may seems like a major innovation and provides decent cost savings. The problem is that they are making it like iPhone, the car is non-repairable or extremely costly. I wonder if anyone has a decent argument against this narrative?
- judge2020 5y agoAs the top comments currently note, the panels are still stamped metal so body work will still need to be done in the event of a non-major collision. The difference is that most body parts they're consolidating are already parts you would never repair anyways, having to replace one would likely mean way more of a cost in man hours and parts than the car's worth, ie. a write-off regardless of this new manufacturing process or not.
- newacc9 5y agoWhy are they not getting serious Osborne effects? I wouldn't want an older model, I'd want a gigacast with the fancy new batteries.
- option 5y agoBecause they currently can’t produce enough older models to satisfy a demand for them. Try ordering MYLR and see the delivery date
- _ph_ 5y agoThey can sell every car they make. Electric cars in general have pretty high delivery times, Tesla is better there though. Also, it is doubtful whether the initial cars from Texas and Grünheide will have the new battery, likely they start with 2170 cells. Tesla constantly rolls out enhancements to their car lines, so there is rarely the best moment to buy, other than when you need a new car.
- throwJan22 5y ago
- samwillis 5y agoIf you want to read more about the actual “Giga Press” see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Press https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Press It’s made by Idra Group in Italy, it’s only a matter of time until other car manufactures also adopt it.
- sixQuarks 5y agoNot really, the incumbent US manufacturers have too much invested in traditional manufacturing techniques to switch over. The new Chinese automakers are the ones that will be implementing it next.
- phkahler 5y ago>> Not really, the incumbent US manufacturers have too much invested in traditional manufacturing techniques to switch over. Sunk cost fallacy. Yes, they tend to fall for that. Sometimes they get past it.
- mupuff1234 5y agoSome of the incumbents have existed for more than a century, saying that they're not capable of changing manufacturing technique is quite silly.
- mahesh_rm 5y agoThe group seems to be a relatively small Company, and have sold only 19 such machines around the world. There must be other manufacturers producing this sort of tech, I guess?
- foepys 5y agoWelcome to Europe where small companies you never heard of make hyper-specialized machines and tools that are being used around the world to manufacture your household items.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
- hourislate 5y ago>requiring custom metal alloys produced in part with SpaceX. Folks don't realize all his companies (Tesla/SpaceX/Boring Co./Starlink/Solar Energy) are one big company. Yeah they have different names but they operate as one, taking advantage of every possible synergy between them. It is a game changer, everything from material science, communication, energy storage, transportation, etc. It's like the Borg....a lot of companies and industry won't know WTF hit them.
- Dig1t 5y agoThis is really cool and super interesting. Maybe someone who knows more about cars can answer: does using a single piece of metal make the car harder to repair in case of a collision? Does it make it more likely to consider the car “totaled” in case of a collision? Is that good or bad for Tesla and/or customers?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- therouwboat 5y agoWith welded parts you can just drill spotwelds out and replace the part, with single piece, you cant even get new part because they only make whole piece. If you manage to get parts, fix wont be as good as new because now there is a weld when it was solid part before.
- vsskanth 5y agoIs this what they call giga press ? Seem them in a couple of YouTube videos. Or is it something new ?
- ISL 5y agoBig presses/forging-machines are perhaps an underappreciated asset. They open up otherwise-impossible possibilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program